What The Fuck Is Up With The Meghan McCain Lovefest?

I wish there was a way to do an intervention on Meghan McCain. If you’re guessing, yes, she’s the daughter of John and Cindy McCain and, as a grown woman, she’s out there stumping for her dad. And, well, I kind of like her. If her blog wasn’t ostensibly to get her war-mongering, corporatist, anti-choice father into office, I’d probably be a fan.

“I’m an Independent. Socially liberal, economically conservative. I believe in a lot of Republican ideals, with the war being the number one thing I completely agree with my dad on.”

Come on, Meghan, if you’re going to disagree with your dad about one goddamn thing, the war would be an excellent choice.

I get that they’re both criticizing her for supporting and campaigning for her father. But they sure are treating her awfully fucking gently, as if she’s some kind of prisoner in her father’s campaign, and if she were only free, she’d be guest-blogging at Pandagon and BitchPhD.

I really don’t understand why she’s getting all this love from progressive female bloggers. Maybe it’s because she puts a slightly friendlier face on than the usual patently demented drooling sick-fuck right-wing apologists for patriarchy, theocracy, oligarchy, and military empire.

Why progressive bloggers are letting themselves be played like this by John McCain’s demented wackaloon right-wing propaganda machine–within which Meghan McCain is playing a role designed to elicit exactly these kinds of reactions from the left–is totally beyond me. I mean Amanda Marcotte was waxing poetical about how cool the music Meghan McCain listens to is. Are you fucking kidding me?

If McCain really believed any of the happy horseshit she is assumed so approvingly to believe, she wouldn’t be campaigning for her father. She’s just another despicable enabler of the right-wing destruction of everything decent in the world. As far as I’m concerned, she can go fuck herself.

(I respect Amanda and M.Leblanc very much, and I am leery of criticizing them publicly like this. Virtually every time I read their shit, I’m all like, “Well fuck, that’s totally fucking right! I wish I could write that fucking well!” But this time I think they’re both a little off the mark totally fucking out of their minds.)

Comments

1. The socially liberal angle would be cool — if there was any reason to believe that Meghan was the base her daddy would be trying to please were he elected. Seems pretty unlikely.

2. Being on board with her dad’s hundred-year occupation of Iraq is pretty damn uncool.

3. Anyone who still remembers high school can attest to the fact that there are plenty of assholes with good taste in music. So, if folks want to borrow CDs from Meghan, that’s one thing, but it does not mean that she kicks ass as a human being — independent grounds for said ass kickery must be provided!

“I get the strong impression reading the blog that McCain is smart, but has chosen to play a role that meshes better with the expectations of Republican voters—that women be smart and bubbly, but not too smart, lest they intimidate the easily intimidated white male voter who votes almost completely because he feels intimidated and needs someone to reassure him he has a big cock.”

Yeah, yeah, THAT would make me admire a woman, watching her tiptoe around so as not to distress the Rethuglican boys.

I haven’t heard a single “McCain’s pimping out his daughter on the blogosphere campaign trail” comments from any of the fair and balanced political fundits. I wonder why.

Also,
—“Why progressive bloggers are letting themselves be played like this by John McCain’s demented wackaloon right-wing propaganda machine–within which Meghan McCain is playing a role designed to elicit exactly these kinds of reactions from the left–is totally beyond me”—
Beyond me too. The ploy is obvious and I’m pissed that liberals are falling for this shit.

The most depressing part of this campaign season for me is seeing young women whose work I greatly admire; women who have grown up with feminism and aren’t old enough to remember mothers like mine who were shunned by the neighbors because ZOMG SHE WORKS OUTSIDE THE HOME!! My mother was hardly a high-powered executive; she was a legal secretary. She worked outside both for the money and because she is a clinical depressive who was miserable at home. I remember when abortion was illegal. I remember the women who were closet alcoholics.

But these are the daughters of the early years of feminism, and they are out there playing the “Hillary is a poor, helpless victim of the mean old misogynist men in the media” game while at the same time elevating the likes of Meghan McCain, a handmaid for her father’s reactionary agenda, to some kind of Riot Grrl icon.

“Anyone who still remembers high school can attest to the fact that there are plenty of assholes with good taste in music.”

Amen.

I also do not get the fawning over Meghan. She’s being used as a decorating accessory to her father’s campaign and Amanda et al see it as admirable that she blogs about trivia while being treated like Checkers to put a more humane face on the wackaloon geezer who spawned her?? I don’t think so.

[Checkers = Nixon’s dog; trotted out back in the ’50s as an example to show that he wasn’t a total slimeball crook.]

I don’t get it either, but I sure love Jill’s post, that was pretty spot on.

Given Ferraro’s comments, Shilary’s general campaign, and Meghan, as just a FEW examples (Coulter, Maklin) perhaps they haven’t come so far after all, baby.

And my working wife will tell ya the same.

She’s worked her ass off all her life, and in the past ten years has become VERY well paid for our lifestyle, and STILL has had to beat back both males and females who just never want to work, or get the job done.

Course, I’ve encountered the same thing, in my work experiences.

Go figger.

I voted for Ferrero, it was the summer I met my wife. I’m VERY disappointed in the ‘movement’ to some extent but hell, given what my wife does on a daily basis, I’m lucky and proud of HER.

Life goes on, it’s not all black and white, and the nuances will either kill us all, or make us laugh at ourselves.

In the end, either you try, or you float.
And sometimes, the floaters get away with it all and thrive.